Shocking! Brain discovered in WRONG body as HUNDREDS of MISTAKES uncovered in mortuaries

Shocking! Brain discovered in WRONG body as HUNDREDS of MISTAKES uncovered in mortuaries

HUNDREDS of mistakes have been uncovered in mortuaries across the UK including a serious incident where a person’s brain was found in the wrong corpse by an undertaker, a Freedom of Information (FOI) request has revealed.

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After the post-mortem, they are usually returned the to the body, with only tissue samples retained if the death is suspicious.

However, there were 13 instance of organs being discovered by hospitals after the rest of a body had been released to a family, while the wrong body was released to families 36 times.

University Hospitals of Leicester NHS Trust recorded the largest number of incidents - 11 - over the three-year period, according to the BBC’s FOI request.

The brain in the wrong body incident occurred at Warwick Hospital, while John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford reported a human error resulted in a mix-up of brains.

Southport & Formby District General Hospital released the wrong body which was then cremated and a large corpse could not be removed from a mortuary freezer in King's College Hospital, London because of the way it had frozen.

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"I said it can't be him as he has been dead for 22 years, and it must be about my brother, with the same name, who had died a few months earlier.

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At least 278 serious incidents were reported from 2014 and 2016 in mortuaries in the UK

Police had arrived had her home to discuss funeral options as they explained that parts of father’s body were still at South Tyneside District Hospital

Ms Simpson added: ”There had been no permission to take any body parts at any time. My dad believed in reincarnation.

"He used to say, you're not taking my eyes or anything because I don't know where I'm going afterwards'," she explained.

She said she had not been given any answers about why it had happened, and the incident had sent her family into panic.

Ms Simpson added: ”I’ve just had to have another funeral for my dad.”

South Tyneside NHS Foundation Trust's Medical Director Dr Shaz Wahid said: "We met with Ms Simpson in September 2017 to explain the conclusions of our internal review into the retention of forensic human tissue samples at South Tyneside District Hospital and the measures we have taken to prevent this from occurring again in the future.

"Once again, we apologise unreservedly to Ms Simpson and all the families involved for the undoubted distress this must have caused."

Chris Birkett, director of regulation for the HTA, said: "Incidents such as these are distressing for the families of those involved and, although they are rare, should never happen.

"If an incident does happen, we work with the establishment to ensure that a thorough investigation is undertaken, that lessons are learned, and that improvements are made to mitigate the risks of similar incidents happening again."

He also said the number of incidents was small considering 330,000 bodies enter the care of mortuaries in England and Wales annually.

Leicester's Hospitals said that as one of the biggest and busiest mortuaries in the UK it dealt with a large number of bodies and insisted it had an excellent culture of reporting.

Meanwhile Oxford University Hospitals said the very regrettable mix-up of brains was because of a labelling error at the John Radcliffe and that an external expert had reviewed its processes in response.

Kings College Hospital said that new procedures had been introduced after the freezer incident to stop the same thing happening again and it had informed and apologised to the family.

University Hospitals Coventry and Warwickshire NHS Trust said a full investigation had been undertaken into the error at Warwick Hospital and it was rectified immediately.